Despite the ruckus there were men fast asleep on the five-foot ways. They were many yards from us, yet the thick smell of unwashed bodies reached my nostrils. Piled next to one another, they were dead to the world, some with mouths wide open. In the shadows cast by the pillars and walls, I could see the tobacco stains on their thin singlets, and a few had tattered shirts which barely covered their bones, so that their ribs showed. All were blissfully unaware of anything around them.
‘One day the white devils will pay for what they’ve done.’
Peng Choon said this sharply, almost hissing it out. I turned round to touch his arm, even though it was broad daylight and I knew that people would look.
I searched my husband’s face, trying to understand what had made him so angry. Peng Choon was a passionate man, but unlike me he had an even temper and was not given to public displays of emotion. Yet when he uttered those words, his voice was tinged with a bitterness I had not heard before.
‘You know an opium addict?’ I asked. My husband was silent before turning to face me. I could not see his eyes properly because of the brightness of the sunlight and the shade from the umbrella, but he sounded sorrowful. His voice was shaky.
‘There was a man from my village.’
With a preoccupied air he resumed walking. Peng Choon told me about the man from his village, a man called Tet Weng, who had left to seek his fortune in Swatow. They weren’t close, but they had been playmates as boys. Nothing was heard from him for years. Then just before boarding his boat for Penang, Peng Choon saw Tet Weng sitting on a side street of Swatow, emaciated and weak. He was a shadow of his former self but was still well enough to turn away in shame, and Peng Choon regretted not having gone up to greet his fellow Hakka.
‘Whatever he has become, it isn’t all his own fault,’ my husband said to me.
That was the first of many conversations we were to have about opium. Until then I had conveniently clung to Father’s beliefs, one of which was that smoking opium was a habit the Chinese were born with. When we first arrived in Ipoh, I had been shocked by the number of addicts on the streets, but I had since grown used to them. Although I pitied the men, I assumed they were responsible for their own misery.
Peng Choon was the first to tell me that it was the British who encouraged opium addiction. The colonial administration sold opium indirectly – via opium farms, which were rented out as concessions. Chinese businessmen were encouraged to bid for the farms and to run them; in turn, they plied the drug to the coolies who worked for them. It was the same with gambling. There were gambling concessions and farms into which Chinese coolies were enticed every payday. In fact, the only people allowed by law into gambling dens in Perak were the Chinese. Through these simple means the colonial administration raised money – while keeping its conscience clean and its Chinese workers in thrall.
My husband forced me to view British rule in a new light. Unlike Father, who was deferential, Peng Choon was critical. In China, he said, the British treated the Chinese like dogs; they behaved better in Malaya, but he was still angry about the way they sold opium. He thought their actions would come back to haunt them. Peng Choon was an advocate of the Anti-Opium Society years before its formation in the Federated Malay States. The seeds of disquiet he sowed in me turned over time into animosity. I could no longer have the rose-tinted view of white rule Father had had.
Such thoughts bore down on me as we stepped on to the Hugh Low Bridge to cross the Kinta River. The Hugh Low Bridge was still a wooden structure then, but the Kinta River looked very much the same as it does now, its waters brown and muddy. We rested on the bridge for a minute. I marvelled at the river, at its simple existence. It was just there – flowing placidly along, oblivious to the tumultuous world around it.
In the early days the Chinese called Ipoh ‘Pa Lo’. The name comes from the Malay word paloh, which referred to the pools alongside the dams of the Kinta River. The fishing traps that were placed into these pools became famous, and a temple was built close to the riverbank. Dedicated to the founding spirit of the Chinese settlement, the Pa Lo Old Temple was surrounded by trees when I first visited. The open space in front of it – the People’s Park – came later.
Pa Lo Old Temple, the first temple ever built in Ipoh, was guarded by a pair of handsome stone lions. It had an ornate roof, with elaborate carvings of deities, dragons and phoenixes decorating its ridges.
But it was in atmosphere that Pa Lo Old Temple excelled. I felt at home at once. As soon as I stepped beyond the white fence which protected the verandah at the front, an inner peace descended. It was as if I had walked through a magical door. The abundance of trees helped, as did the tranquillising call of the turtle doves outside. Stopping on the verandah to listen, I was spellbound. Sometimes, when all was quiet, I could hear the water of the Kinta River as it trickled past.
Inside the Pa Lo Old Temple, while holding a handful of joss-sticks and thinking about the beauty in this world, I met Siew Lan. Because she was dressed in similar fashion to me, we noticed each other immediately. Unlike Penang, Ipoh did not have a ready-made Nyonya-Baba community, and whenever I saw someone whose clothes indicated she was a Nyonya or he a Baba, my interest was aroused. I could not help myself; my eyes would dart straight to the other person.
So it was with Siew Lan.
There are people whose lives are etched into their faces, and Siew Lan was one of these. She had the saddest face I’ve ever known: eyes stamped with the imprint of harsh words; a forehead creased by worry; and a smile so diffident I thought it would disappear, as if she dared not be happy even for a moment. Which is not to say that Siew Lan was unattractive; her lips were thick and sensuous, and when animated, she glowed with a beauty from within, unenhanced by jewel sets or rings, rouge paper or charcoal pencils.
Siew Lan was timid, but I liked her at once. I took instantly to that exquisitely innocent face which told a thousand stories of hardship. We started chatting at the temple and continued as we walked to my house.
I heard how, when Siew Lan was fifteen, her mother had been duped. Siew Lan was married to a man from Hainan who had been described by the matchmaker as a businessman in his thirties. The bridegroom turned out to be twenty years older than purported and a dishwasher at one of the Chinese coffee shops on Leech Street. He was dirty, infected with tuberculosis, and violent when drunk. Siew Lan endured a year of marital hell. After one beating too many, she left him while he was working at the restaurant.
Siew Lan fled Ipoh for Taiping, the capital of Perak, where she found work cooking and looking after children. That had been nine years ago. She had not dared to return, knowing that her husband had been looking for her all around town and even as far afield as Batu Gajah. It was only after consumption took his life that she returned to Ipoh, her dignity intact but with a deep regret, for in her absence she had missed her poor mother’s funeral.
When we met, Siew Lan was looking for work. It took a while before she was hired, because she demanded seven dollars a month – a princely sum at the time. On top of that she was picky about her household. Siew Lan had managed to save a small amount, and because of her renowned culinary skills she could afford to be choosy. With free time on her hands, Siew Lan spent hours at my house chewing betel nut leaves and chatting. We talked about Ipoh, about the households and prospective employers she had seen. We discussed our favourite stallholders in the market and told stories from our past. We exchanged street gossip about the women who lived nearby, their husbands and what they did. There was no limit to what we talked about; sometimes we ended up rolling on the floor, cackling like children.
Besides my husband, Siew Lan became my first real friend in Ipoh. Peng Choon was happy I had a companion. He told me so himself as he gave me the warmest of smiles. But there were times, beneath the flash of his dimples, when I had a sneaking suspicion that he was just that little bit jealous.
One day I felt a sensation in my belly. It was only a mild tug, but the pull was
sharp enough to make me look down. I stroked my stomach. My monthly bleeding was already several weeks late. It now seemed that the time had come.
I wanted to shout to my husband. He of course was at work, so I did the next best thing: I went to see Siew Lan. She held both my hands in hers as she told me, with tears in her eyes, ‘Chye Hoon, I so happy for you.’
9
It was an agony like none I had known. Squatting with legs wide apart, I clung to Mother for dear life. The bidan, a Malay housewife in her fifties who had delivered babies for a quarter of a century, knelt beside me. She watched every contortion of my face. When the time was at hand, she moved behind my back.
Alongside Mother, the bidan, whose name was Soraiya, was with me continuously during the final twenty-four hours. They took turns wiping my brow, giving me water and massaging my stomach with herbal oils. Soraiya, who could feel the baby, assured me everything was fine. She told me its head and legs were in the right position and she expected a straightforward birth. Still, it was my first child. When the contractions began, I was unprepared. I lay on my back, sprawled out in shock.
The bidan dabbed at the perspiration on my forehead with a damp towel. When the spasms started, they were just pangs; later on they became more intense and frequent. At some point I began to scream. I cried, shouting at the top of my lungs. Soraiya murmured, ‘Not long now, my dear,’ as she rested her hands on my belly. She continued massaging me with herbal oil. During those last stages I felt a force under her expert hands as the life within me made desperate attempts to get out. Between contractions the bidan helped me sit up. Getting out of bed, I thought I would faint, but somehow, holding on to Mother, I made it on to the floor. My waters had broken earlier with just a pop, a sound so soft it could barely be heard. Then the fluid gushed out, wetting a large patch on the bed. As I squatted, more fluid continued flooding the floor. I had not been especially large during pregnancy, and I was amazed by the volume of water.
Soraiya’s able kneading of my back soothed me. When the paroxysms returned, they came with explosive force, faster . . . and harder . . . then faster . . . and I heard the bidan say, ‘Nearly there, my love. And now you must push.’
I know I was screaming then as I had never screamed before. Peng Choon, who had been sent outside, described my cries as heart-wrenching. Back in his village his first wife had barely shouted during the birth of their son, and he became worried when he heard me.
I was aware of little except the pain. I had to brace myself for each spasm; as soon as it gripped, the shock forced me to release my lungs, so that the pangs completely enveloped me. Sounds exploded in my head. I could not bear the slightest rustle or clink; even the scrape of a teacup against its saucer drove me mad, and I yelled at Mother to stop drinking. Somewhere in between Soraiya said, ‘Relax. Now push, keep pushing.’ I responded, doing the only thing I could: I relaxed, then pushed, relaxed, then pushed again in continuous rhythm. By the end the whole of my body was sore, every bone . . . every muscle . . . the whole of my back . . . a torment so excruciating all I wanted was for my baby to come out so that it could all be over.
When I first suspected I was pregnant, my excitement was mingled with anxiety. Peng Choon’s reaction was similar; he became in turn ecstatic, laughing loudly (‘Good, good!’) and then worried (‘You sure-ah?’) and finally excited once more, grinning like a child. We stood facing one another for a long time, as if in disbelief, caressing the loose baju covering my belly. It was what he wanted – a Malayan-born son. We both hoped it would be for real, that we were indeed moving towards that world of his dreams.
After the initial tug, sickness interrupted my morning routine. I noticed new sensations early on. A strange taste lingered in my mouth, a bitter taste I associated with rusty nails. That was why I developed a craving for sour food. I would go into our kitchen looking for the Malay gooseberry pickles we kept in lidded bowls and sit stuffing them into my mouth. Other times I woke up dreaming of stir-fried cucumbers in vinegar and would long for the taste of them. I made achar awak so much that I added it to my culinary repertoire. Its assortment of cabbage, carrots, cucumbers and long beans, dried in the sun, then pickled in a wonderful lemongrass-infused paste and topped with nuts, kept the bitterness in my mouth at bay.
For many months I remained small. People who did not know me thought I was simply putting on weight. I’m the same height as Mother – five feet two inches – and I was a slim woman then, before my children came, so that my pregnancy was not obvious. I felt strangely alive. Every part of my body grew. My hair, which at the time already flowed down to the waist, suddenly reached the floor; my fingernails, all pink and rosy, demanded frequent attention.
One day I felt a gentle tickling inside my belly like the flicker of a butterfly against the skin. The sudden touch brought back memories of Songkhla and the butterflies I had once caught. Soon the tickling turned into a tumbling as my baby made itself comfortable deep inside me.
It was then that other worries came to the fore. I remembered how weak Mother had been after the birth of my younger sister, Chye Keat. When I had demanded to be allowed into her room, Mother had looked so limp as she lay in bed that I feared she would die. We knew women who had died giving birth and had heard stories of many others bleeding violently, their babies stillborn or strangled by their own cords. I longed to have Mother by my side when the time came, to have her wisdom with me.
I confided as much to Siew Lan. My friend often came to see me. We would sit chatting, she drinking coffee and chewing betel nut leaves, me sipping tea as we made plans for my pregnancy. It was Siew Lan who persuaded me to invite Mother to Ipoh. I was then worrying about anything and everything. Wild, random thoughts raced through my mind. What if my child was born dead or sickly? There seemed to be so much I did not know. How would I cope without help, as we could not afford a servant then, even though Peng Choon tried to persuade me otherwise? As for a bidan, if I were to locate one, how would I judge whether she was any good? These were things Mother would have at her fingertips. A wave of relief washed over me when she agreed to stay with us for six months.
Newborn babies look ugly, unless they happen to be your own.
Professionals, of course, know what to say, and Soraiya had a tender look as she handed me a bundle in soft cloth. ‘You have a lovely baby,’ she whispered. ‘A girl, yes, but so pretty.’
Disappointment gripped me. Mother, though, fussed about with cooing noises, and when I saw my baby girl I understood why. She was beautiful, with her pink face, shock of black hair and the tiniest fingers, which lay unmoving. My baby was so placid I was not even sure she was alive, but then she started to cry.
Through a slit in the window, a slice of light showed up motes of dust. My husband charged through the mist, expecting the worst. When he saw the two of us lying peacefully together, he let out a palpable sigh.
‘You have a sweet baby girl,’ Mother announced proudly.
I looked hard at Peng Choon, knowing his desire for a boy. We’d talked months before about the Chinese custom of giving away girl babies as sacrifices to the gods in the hope that a boy would eventually come. It was a practice I found odious. I was pleasantly surprised by Peng Choon’s assurance that he would never ask me to give away a child. ‘Wife,’ he said, ‘I want a son, but giving away a child – no, I can’t do that.’
Yet I wasn’t sure I completely believed him. As I searched his face, I wondered what he was thinking. If my husband felt any disappointment that day, he masked it well. He told me later he had been convinced from my screams that I would die. While pacing outside, he swore he would accept whatever the gods granted. He just wanted us alive and well.
After entering the room, he stared at me as if he had seen a miracle. He ran to my side, asking repeatedly, ‘You well? You all right?’ And then he looked at our baby and for a while just stood smiling. Finally, he asked to hold his daughter.
‘She’s a healthy baby,’ he said softly. ‘We have time
enough for a boy.’
We called our first daughter Hui Fang in the hope that she would grow up with the fragrance of kindness.
For seven days after Hui Fang’s birth, Soraiya came to our house from her kampong to attend to my postnatal care. She took a long-handled piece of iron with an end shaped like an elongated bat, heated it over clumps of charcoal in the kitchen and then wrapped the bat in layers of cloth. Next would begin the slow massage, her wrapped-up bat carefully dabbing my exposed abdomen portion by portion to expel the airs that had aggregated in the course of pregnancy. How much excess air I had I did not know, but I savoured every minute of Soraiya’s rhythmic circling.
In addition to this Malay tradition, I was kept inside the house for a month, because we also followed the Chinese practice of confinement. Mother coddled me endlessly, and there were times when I felt like a child once more. She sat watching me eat the dishes she had prepared, food smothered in plenty of sesame oil and sliced ginger to replenish lost energy. Every evening she gave me a cup of Chinese rice wine, and she kept me on a diet so strict I could hardly wait for the month to end, even though I was spoilt by not having to work.
During the day Mother took Hui Fang off my hands and carried her about so that I could rest. I would wake to see Mother in the chair opposite our bed, cradling my daughter in her arms. We did not talk then, as we were loath to wake the baby, but we would look at each other, Mother and I, exchanging smiles. The warmth in her eyes told me she enjoyed being with us.
The Woman Who Breathed Two Worlds Page 8